Fire 2 San Jose cops who had forbidden sex and lied to investigators, auditor says

SAN JOSE -- Two San Jose police officers who had sex in questionable circumstances should be fired for lying to internal affairs investigators about various acts of misconduct, the city's police auditor says in a new report.

In her annual review of the San Jose Police Department, retired Judge LaDoris Cordell also found fault in about a dozen internal affairs investigations that cleared officers from allegations that they improperly used force. Still, the report concludes that the vast majority of the police force and its internal affairs unit is performing well.

Cordell took issue with two unnamed officers who the police department's IA unit said it examined for alleged criminal and policy violations, only to be caught lying during the investigation. They received suspensions that lasted about one month -- the only suspensions the department handed out in either 2012 or 2013.

But many of the departments that the auditor's office surveyed said they fire cops for lying to detectives and that should be San Jose's policy, too, she said.

"Most (other departments) say, 'you lie, you die. You're useless, why would we keep you?'" Cordell said in an interview Friday. "That's the whole integrity of your department -- it depends on the honesty of those wearing badges and having guns."

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One of the two officers in question was working a secondary job at a local undisclosed school, where he often broke policy by wearing a "San Jose Police" windbreaker and a polo shirt that had another officer's name and badge number on it, the IA team found. He also often failed to report his hours working at the school.

Once, he had sex with a woman at the school while he was supposed to be working there, which ultimately led the woman to allege the officer sexually assaulted her, according to the report. The report said the officer lied to IA detectives during their criminal investigation. Those results were not made public by the police department and not known by the auditor.

In the other case, a different officer often secretly went home while he was supposed to be on duty and had sex with a woman while in his uniform -- both department violations. He also lied in his IA interview.

Neither a police department spokeswoman nor the president of the police officer's union returned messages seeking comment.

The report's other main findings involved officers using weapons, takedowns or other uses of force on suspects. The auditor found that in 2012 and 2013, people lodged 275 complaints against cops, accusing them of improperly using force. The department, however, determined every complaint was either bogus or represented a justified use of force.

The auditor's office reviewed about half of those recent allegations and determined about 9 percent of the IA investigations were not thorough enough for the department to know whether use of force was warranted.

"I think it's worthy of discussion," said Cordell.

Most of the other violations outlined in the report involved officers failing to file police reports, using improper language to the public or speeding through streets in their cruisers when there wasn't an emergency.